One fine young artist

He has had President Yoweri Museveni as a special VIP guest to his London art exhibition in 2007 and the Kabaka of Buganda launched his first solo exhibition a year before that. Ismael Kateregga (pictured), one of Uganda’s most gifted artists has another exhibition which started on the November 7th .

He studied Industrial and Fine Arts at Makerere University before beginning his career as a painter. Famed for his depictions of Kampala’s bustling life, he uses an impressionistic (between realism and abstract) approach where the images seem kind of abstract and more distinct from long distances.

One of the country’s young artists, he has already held eight solo exhibitions, participated in the 2007 Crafts and Arts Awards and had his work featured in the East African Art Biennale. This is however going to be his first wild life exhibition with animals and a few plants. The change in them came easier than he would have thought after he first painted an elephant in 2007 and someone from Netherlands bought it immediately. “I loved that painting and although I was selling it, losing it hurt,” he says, joking that it was the one piece he would have wanted to hold on to. After that, he felt like he needed a replacement and studied different animals in Ugandan, taking great interest in the way they lived and interacted with each other. He was intrigued to find that most animals had a sense of togetherness and unity which most human beings are incapable of - gorilla tours in Uganda

This, combined with the natural beauty of Uganda, made it a personal goal for Kateregga to raise awareness about wildlife and its conservation among fellow Ugandans. He remembers travelling to Bunyoro where oil is being drilled with no consideration for the young antelopes that reside there. “It hurts me that the beauty is not being recognised and these animals are approached as a source of food only,” he said. Using another technique of washes (where the paint is more fluid than usual), Kateregga is going to display 26 to 27 paintings at Ndere Centre for a month in the hope of speaking to Ugandans and the world about wildlife and co-existing with it. We have other blogs offering safari packages review as well as African travel